Holiday Scares: American Horror Story- Roanoke (Pilot)

We live in a divided America.  For example, do you support Person A or Person B?  Do you like Pizza or are you stupid?  Is this Season of American Horror Story the worst?  I could have gone from Season 1 to Season 2- sure.  Instead of doing something that logical, I thought I would go from the first Season to the most divisive.  After a scary House, a Sanitarium, some Witches, a Freak show and a Hotel, we got this Season.  It is hard to exactly explain what is going on here, even just covering the 1st Episode.  It only gets weirder as the Season progresses- or so I'm told.  This was part of the big career resurgence of Cuba Gooding Jr.  How is that still going?  Did Ryan Murphy try to do too much this time?  To find out, read on...

So I already have a lot to explain...

Instead of just doing a straight-forward Story (with stylish twists and turns), we get...a fake Show within a Show.

It's still not as weird as Amish Haunting though...

So we get the Story of a Couple that moves out to North Carolina to a House in/around the titular Town that is associated with mystery...

...and cuts to the 'real people' (also Actors) as portrayed by actual Actors (in the Show's narrative).

META is better!

Can the Couple survive their new home?  Will the freaky things going on in the House be too much for them?

To find out just how freaky this will be, watch the Pilot (and the rest of the Show- now on Netflix).

A more subtle, if confusing start to the Season.  The first Episode ever of AHS tried to really shock you.  To be fair, it kind of had to.  It was a new Show and had to go strong out of the gate.  Many Years and Seasons later, they had both less and more pressure.  They had a built in audience, but always had to sell them right away too.  It has become 'appointment television.'  At this point, they had to both be mysterious in the build-up and shocking in the actual Pilot.  They do a fairly-good job here, although the format is a bit abused.  To reiterate: I'm watching a TV Show that is about a fake TV Show with Actors playing other Actors playing fake real People in staged 'recreations' of fake events, while Actors playing fake 'real people' talk about what 'happened' to them.  Damn!  It only gets crazier as the Show changes format at least 2 more times in the Season.  I'm going to have to Review all of this, aren't I?  In the meantime, I'll just say that the Pilot is interesting, but a bit pretentious and weird.  For example, we get a reenactment of the Lead's Sister having a dramatic moment with her soon-to-be ex-Husband.  Would a Show about the Couple facing off with Ghosts bother to do this?  I don't think so.  While you ponder questions like this on America's sort-of-Birthday, I have one more- will we ever stop scaring Sarah Paulson?  The poor lady needs a break!

Next time, my Birthday Review.  It is going to be...arty and pretentious.  Stay tuned...